


Character Studies - Kushieda Minori

by forkandgarden_3



Series: Character Studies [2]
Category: Toradora!
Genre: Character Study, No Plot/Plotless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2019-03-10 11:05:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13500538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forkandgarden_3/pseuds/forkandgarden_3
Summary: Kushieda Minori basic character study [2]





	Character Studies - Kushieda Minori

 

She's the scariest, biggest liar. 

She’s drowning. Or more accurately, she’s treading so hard, but is just about to drown, at any moment. 

She overworks herself because she needs to be occupied, needs to keep busy. Because idle times means time for thinking. And that’s the last thing she wants to do. So she works as much as possible. With school, clubs, and part time jobs. She does anything she can so she doesn’t have to think. When she goes home, she sleeps. She lies about working, because that's her mask, her safe zone. She can make jokes because she's on the clock. She can goof off, because she's being watched. "the joy of being young" is just another form of deception. She works so she doesn't think. She doesn't want to think for a lot of different reasons. 

She doesn’t want to think how she might be queer. She even says it herself to Ryuji, but retracts it because it got too real. And it’s not entirely honest. She's ~~probably~~ might be bisexual. She doesn't want to think about it because she doesn't know if she'll like the answer she reaches. She doesn't want to think about the future, because it's never really clear. She doesn't want to think about her feelings for Ryuji, because if she has to think about Ryuji, she'll end up thinking about Taiga. 

she really does have some sort of feelings for him, but first and foremost, she loves Taiga more than anyone else. She’s shady in the fact that she’s never fucking honest with anyone, not even herself. She holds everything inside and lets it out with anything _**but**_   her words. Ami calls her out on this and that's when she starts to get weird. 

Even when given a number of great opportunities to talk about her feelings, even when she was given a number of great outs, she didn't say anything real or substantial. She goes in circles about what she wants. She  _hate_ s words and will never use them. For her, keeping her depression at bay is the number one priority, because she doesn't want to feel like she's being a burden. She doesn't think she's worth worrying over. And her depression didn't stem from a small love triangle, it's been going on for years. She has a need to smother everything, so she puts on a mask of a silly, hard working person, because who would question that girl. 

But no one would say that she’s good at hiding her feelings. When she’s conflicted, she starts to mess up in the sport she’s absolutely confident in.  EXCEPT. She’s exceptional at hiding her feelings. No one has ever questioned her before. Sure, the occasional question of, "why are you working so hard" comes up, but she can give a smile and a silly answer and that would be the end of that. It’s only when everything and everyone else around her starts to get weird that she can’t hold it in. Ami is partly to blame for this. Because she hit the bulls-eye so very cruelly.  

Minori is trying desperately not to drown. She puts on airs. She works, she plays sports, anything to keep the depression at bay. She does a lot of things, but she can’t help it in in the end; when Taiga and Ryuji run away for that brief moment- she drowns. 

That might have been the end of her if Ami wasn't there to help her back up in the end. Not in a suicidal way, because she's not suicidal, but in a way that she would no longer be able to act happy and cheerful- at least for a while. She would have been stuck in the pit that is depression and wouldn't have been able to keep it at bay any longer. 

 


End file.
